1. Field of the Invention
The present application claims priority related applications under Japanese patent application Nos. JP2005-351783 filed Dec. 6, 2005 and JP2006-240495 filed Sep. 5, 2006 both co-owned at the time of application and both incorporated by reference in their entirety.
The present invention generally relates to a road boundary detecting apparatus for detecting an object on a road, and a method of detecting a boundary of a roadway being traveled by a vehicle.
2. Background Art
Japanese published patent application H10-214326A discloses a traveling control apparatus for a vehicle. This traveling control apparatus detects an edge from a picture image and thereby transforms the aligned edge row by means of a Hough transform to detect a roadway boundary. The Hough transform requires, for each detection of a point of the roadway boundary, drawing a curve in a parameter space, and adding an accumulated value of the points on the curve. The process has to be executed at all points that form the roadway boundary. U.S. patent application Ser. No. 11/146,041 filed on Jun. 7, 2005 (entitled “Motion Detection Apparatus and Motion Detection Method,” Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. P2004-278250 filed Sep. 24, 2004 entitled “Motion Detector and Motion Detection Method,” and Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. P2004-2793984 entitled “Apparatus and Method for Detecting Motion,” disclose apparatuses and methods for detecting and calculating speed information of objects in motion, and are all hereby incorporated by reference in their entirety.